Jeremy Denk, the pianist who is as much fun to read as to listen to, has turned a New Yorker essay into a book. In the magazine's April 8 issue, Denk wrote a story about his piano teachers and what he had learned from them. "Every Good Boy Does Fine" was as fine an exploration of piano lessons as anything I've read. Denk also blogs in hilarious and illuminating ways.

Random House would like him to expand his essay into a book and is giving him two years to finish it.

“I hope it doesn’t sound silly
to say that for me there is a connection between the task of piano
playing, trying to find the elusive combination of nuances that bring
the phrase alive, and the search for the ‘perfect’ combination of words
to express something,” Mr. Denk wrote in an e-mail. “I guess the common
thread is communication and hopefully that “shiver of delight” when
something is expressed in an imaginative, unexpected way.”

Andy
Ward, Mr. Denk’s editor at Random House, said that Mr. Denk had two
years to write the book, which is due to be published in 2015 or 2016.

“The
trick is to find time to write this book over the next year or two,
while practicing and performing,” Mr. Denk said. He added that the book
would probably include material that he had explored in his blog, but
that “the idea at the moment is to attempt something a bit bigger, more
continuous – a weaving of wry autobiography and accessible, even
bizarre, musical analysis—which I have never done, and we’ll see if I
can do! (I’m excited to try.)”